Tag: college

How To Go To College As An Adult

I can’t slay your college giant, but I can tell you how I killed mine.

I started my higher education career at Gateway College of Evangelism back in 2005. Fresh out of high school. But I left at the end of the semester to go work in youth ministry in Virginia. I did that for 12 years. I have no regrets. But I have always felt like college was a big ugly giant following me around every day. I knew that if I didn’t square up with him and whip him then he would never leave me alone.

Maybe that’s how you feel. If so, I can’t slay your college giant. But I can tell you how I killed mine: Slowly.

Zane, you’re too smart to not go to college.

Pastor Jeremy Wilbanks. (And a bunch of other people)

Make a Decision

This is where you confront college. I am going to engage in mortal combat with this giant. I am not going to give up until I kill him. And when I am done I am going to hang him on the wall in my office.

Have a Plan

You don’t just pick a fight with a giant without having some kind of plan. You need to know what you are going to study. You need a plan for when you will study. You need to know how much time you can allot for study so you don’t overwhelm yourself.

“College is really just a lot of reading.”

Non-traditional student. That is the label that college puts on you when you work a full-time job, are raising a family, and have many commitments outside of work. A traditional student has little or no responsibilities and is able to tackle college full-time straight out of high school. While non-traditional students do have more work and family responsibilities, they are not bound by traditional expectations. I guess I have always been a non-traditional student since I went year-round k-12. I also did a stint at Wilson University where you could only take one class at a time, but at your own pace. So if you wanted to complete a course in a month you had the freedom to do it. You could even test out of some subjects. This confused the tar out of my employer when I took advantage of their tuition reimbursement program.

There is a freedom in being able to make your own attack plan. I found that I was able to take two classes per semester and one each summer. It was a war of attrition.

College is expensive. You need to have a plan for paying for college. I have several friends that are still harrowed by student loan debt. For years I avoided going to college because I felt that it was irresponsible to accumulate debt. And I still feel that way. But it turns out if you are broke enough there is a strong chance that you can get a Pell Grant. And If you are persistent in applying, you could very well be granted a scholarship. I received a scholarship for Business Administration because I wrote an essay. Which makes me wonder how I earned a C in English Composition II.

Stay Motivated

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. Galatians 6:9

One of the biggest motivators for me was a promise that I made to my Dad.

“I’m going to go back to college Dad.” This was one of the last things I told Dad while he was still lucid. He died a few days later. That was in 2018. It is 2023 now and I have finally graduated with a Associate in Science, Business Administration degree. Magna cum laude. This degree would only take a traditional student a couple of years at the most to complete. But I was and will always be a non-traditional student.

I really wish I could tell my Dad about this. But he is gone so I am telling you. I did something that no other Wells that I know has ever done. Something that not many of them even had the chance to do. My great-grandfather was simply uneducated. Pop (my grandfather) had to drop out of middle school to help make ends meet, but he valued education. So when my father graduated high school it was monumental for the Wells family. I strongly believe that Pop could have excelled as a mechanical engineer had he been able to continue his studies. There was hardly any machine that he couldn’t fix. He was also quick with mental math. I feel the same way about Dad. He had a brilliant mind. He could recall things he read decades before. He also had the remarkable ability to put abstract concepts into language that simple people could understand. Without a doubt, my father would have excelled in academia. But we can do nothing for the dead, and must address the living.

The other motivating factor for me to finish college was my children. I want my children to know that education is not something to fear. I do not want them to be destroyed for a lack of knowledge. I want them to know that hard things can be done, and they can be done with excellence.

There is a good chance that I will resume formal study again in the future. But currently I am sizing up a different giant.

Shakespeare: Poet & Playwright

Truth is independent of belief.

I would like to consider myself a mild mannered man. Someone who exhibits self control. A man of temperance and longsuffering. In short, I strive to be a gentleman. But every once in a while something stokes sufficient righteous indignation in me to take some sort of action. I may not be mad enough to “bust some windows out”, as my father would say, but I am concerned enough to take up my pen.

The matter which has inspired me to write was a discussion board assignment for my Theatre Appreciation class.

Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition’s website under the Activities folder, and read the Declaration.  Based on the information provided, do you think that the man we know as William Shakespeare wrote the plays of Shakespeare?  If no, who do you think may have written the plays? 

Here is the link the text if you are so inclined to read it. If not, suffice it to say that this is a link to an organization that doubts that William Shakespeare wrote the plays ascribed to his name. This is not a new movement, and it’s not really what bothers me. Anyone who is above average will have their critics. As a convinced Christian, I am accustomed to the doubting crowd. Truth is independent of belief. 

This was my response on the discussion board.

I have no problem believing that the man William Shakespeare is the author of the plays and sonnets ascribed to his name. Some of the reasons given for doubting his authorship are absurd. For instance, spelling in the English language was not standardized in Shakespeare’s time, which accounts for the variant spellings of his name. Doubters also point out that Shakespeare was uneducated, or received minimal education at best. This, I believe, is the heart of the controversy: how could an uneducated man from a small town in the country write some of the most highly revered masterpieces of English literature? This testament to the human genius is difficult for many academic minds to comprehend.

Too much attention to textual and source criticism degrades the value of the work of art. We may not know much about the author’s life, but we do know that he had a near perfect understanding of human life, and a mastery of the English language.
For more information on this subject, I would suggest reading Will of the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt.

In short, the burden of proof is on the doubters. To date there has been insufficient evidence to dethrone William Shakespeare as a literary genius.

So now you know how I feel about Shakespeare’s authorship. Perhaps I am wrong, probably not. I just believe that ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things and being incredibly gifted, even without formal education. Please understand me, I am not against education. This whole article is about something that happened in a college course. Brilliance is not predicated on education. We all know some 

There were only seven other responses to the discussion so far. They were all in doubt of Shakespeare’s credibility, but that isn’t what bothered me. What’s a slobbering hog to a jaybird? What I find alarming is how casually and quickly they came to this conclusion. 

By reading some of their responses I gathered that this was the first time that many of them realized that Shakespeare’s authorship has been in question. It was clear that they had allowed a single article with a decided slant to influence their opinion. Their responses were so casual. Let us remember that this is college discussion board; a rather annoying assignment which very few college students give much thought. 

As an unashamedly fan of the works of William Shakespeare it would be disappointing to find out that he did not author the plays and sonnets which bear his name; but other than cheapening these works of art for me, disproving his authorship has little or no significance in light of the weightier matters of life. My concern is if someone can be swayed so easily on a matter as trivial as the credibility of one of the pillars of English literature, will they be able to find solid ground when it comes to anything of actual importance? Or will they be tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine? 

 

 

 

Back to College

I recently decided, in a moment of weakness, to go back to college. I just wanted you to know that after all these years, I still hate Algebra. I’m sure Algebra helps with abstract thought in some way, but I’m not all that sure that I need much help with abstract thought. I’d like to view myself as an abstract thinker, someone who finds unique solutions to every day problems. Take the time that I cleaned my glasses with the water hose and dried them off on the concrete; if that’s not abstract thinking, I don’t know what is. As an adult, I can also say that most of my bosses have not appreciated this type of creative problem solving.

The thing about Algebra is, I don’t care. I care about the population of Eritrea and who invented Worcestershire sauce, but not how to solve quadratic equations. It has always been a bad habit of mine to only take care to learn the things that interest me. It’s not that I’m incapable of learning, I just have a selective academic palate.

I’m certain that this statement will paint me as an uncultured swine, but college degrees have never impressed me much. Some of the dumbest people I know have attended college. My Dad used to tell a story of a old man who had worked in the machine shop at Union Foundries for nearly thirty years. A fresh young college graduate had recently taken a job in upper management and was prone to “screwing up royally” as Dad used to say. Whenever these things happened, sometimes halting production, the old man would just shake his head, laugh and say, “He been to college though.”

Nevertheless, college degrees impress employers. Having a college education doesn’t make you any smarter, just more educated. And more qualified. And more qualified to do what? “Ay, there’s the rub.” Anyway, enough dreaming, I’ve got to go extract some square roots.